Really Simply Said: RSS Explained Simply

kpotis — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:28:45 +0000

The lazy man’s way to surf.

Last December, my wife and I spent Christmas in Florida. I remember sitting by the pool, comfortable and relaxed, reading a new book. We decided to get a couple drinks and I had two choices–get up and order the drinks from the bar across the pool complex or order them poolside. I took the poolside option. It didn’t cost me any more and the drinks came to me.

RSS is to news, what poolside services is to a vacation. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, but that’s not really important. What matters is all your favorite web news and updates come to you. I have feeds from AIGA, DMI, Wired, LifeHacker, AppleInsider and 70 more websites. It’s incredibly easy to use and a huge time saver.

I really liked this simple, low-tech 3-minute video. Combine whiteboard, erasable marker and cut paper icons and you get a simple description of RSS.

Simply put, you subscribe to a web site via their RSS feed. That feed goes to your reader (I use Google Reader). Your RSS reader checks your subscribed feeds regularly for new content and downloads any updates that it finds to your reader. That’s it. You then peruse your reader and read in the stories our interested in.

I moved all my favorite sites over to RRS feeds last year and I would never go back to the “old way”. My kids’ schools even provide an RSS feed for updates on events and schedule changes.

Enjoy the short video and let your sites come to you, poolside.

Source: I’ve become a genuine fan of Craig Swanson’s CreativeTechs Tips site.

The Inhouse Creative » Syndication

Really Simply Said: RSS Explained Simply